


The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

by emjee (MerryHeart)



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: 6000 Years of Slow Burn (Good Omens), Accidental Bonding, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Mental Link, Metaphysical Sex, Other, Psychic Bond, Soul Bond, empathic link, hiding your soul bond from your bosses, it's the soulbond AU that actually several people asked for, tfw you accidentally get married on the astral plane, while simultaneously being 6000 years of marriage
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-23
Updated: 2020-01-31
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:13:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21527302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MerryHeart/pseuds/emjee
Summary: A quick tumble in the Garden of Eden turns unexpectedly metaphysical, and now Aziraphale and Crowley have to deal with an empathic link, a lot of inconvenient lust, and, worst of all, emotions. Oh, and making sure their bosses never find out that they accidentally got soul-married on the astral plane.Hijinks, as one might imagine, ensue.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 329
Kudos: 742





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to [the_moonmoth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_moonmoth) for her lovely and very helpful feedback.
> 
> I'm filing this under both Book!Omens and TV!Omens because there are elements of both despite the canon divergence, but I really owe my thanks to Radio "Crowley and Aziraphale Totally Fucked in the Garden of Eden and Have Been Friends With Benefits Ever Since" !Omens.

Later, Aziraphale would claim that it only happened because they were at loose ends waiting for new orders, and it had been a deeply, deeply weird day.

Aziraphale and Crawly stood on the wall until the humans disappeared from sight—a function of both distance and rain. Crawly stuck a hand out from under Aziraphale’s wing and let the raindrops spatter onto his upturned palm.

“Could go either way,” he said.

“What’s that?” asked Aziraphale.

“This whole rain thing. Lots of potential, rather lovely change from all that blasted sun. On the other hand, too much would likely be a problem, and being damp seems tiresome.”

“I suppose.”

The thunder receded behind distant mountains and the rain began to ease up. Aziraphale shook his wings dry and folded them. The sky remained cloudy.

“Well,” he said, turning toward Crawly, “is it on to the next temptation with you?” His tone was both unfailingly polite and unmistakably disapproving. His ability to achieve such a balance was a natural gift that would later greatly assist his (mostly) successful assimilation into British society.

“No one else to tempt, is there?” said Crawly. “Yet. Suppose I’m just here for the time being, til I’m told different.”

“Hm,” sniffed Aziraphale.

“What about you? Back up to Heaven at the first blast of the trumpet?”

“Not…exactly. I’m supposed to guard the gate, you know.”

“With your sword.”

“Sword or no sword,” Aziraphale replied, sounding as though he’d just remembered all over again that he didn’t have it. “I have my orders.”

Aziraphale did not, in fact, have orders re: what to do in the absence of a flaming sword. Aziraphale was, in fact, bluffing. He dearly hoped no one would notice either of these facts, all the while knowing in the back of his mind that Someone always did.

“So we’re both here,” said Crawly. “Not much sense standing on this wall, is there? Let’s go back into the garden.”

“I have to stay up here.” There was stubborn look on Aziraphale’s face, as much to convince himself as anyone else. “I have to guard the gate.”

“From _who_?”

“Whom.”

“What?”

“It’s a grammatical—never mind, it was rude of me to point it out.”

Crawly made a mental note to investigate grammar and its ability to create tension in interpersonal communications. “Who, whom, whatever, _what_ could possibly threaten the gate? There are only two humans, and they’ve gone very far away.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Aziraphale, “last I checked the there was a demon slinking around it.”

“First of all, I seldom _slink_. Secondly, what am I going to do, damn myself with the Tree of Knowledge and make myself immortal with the Tree of Life? Done and done, didn’t even need the fruit.”

“I like fruit,” Aziraphale sighed.

“You what?”

“The fruit, alright, I’ve had some. Not the important stuff—”

“Perish the thought—”

“But there were some truly lovely, I think they’re called grapes. Little things. Round and purple and sweet.”

“Sounds delightful. Let’s go have some.” Aziraphale was on the verge of giving in, Crawly could feel it. “Come on, angel. We’re alone and we’re bored.”

Experience would later teach Aziraphale that nothing good ever came of the two of them in such a situation.

***

They found some grapes and sat down to eat them under a flowering tree (not That One).

“Mm,” said Crawly, as they ravaged their scavenged grapevine, “these _are_ rather pleasant. How’d you come across them?”

“Oh, wandering around. They looked so lovely, and what with the, you know, human-shaped corporation. I was curious, is all.”

“They let angels be curious now?”

Aziraphale glared. The effect was rather undermined as he popped another grape into his mouth. “I was given no instructions either way regarding the consumption of food, and therefore am not disobeying anything.”

“Hm,” said Crawly. The clouds were scattering, finally, and the stars were just beginning to come out. He could see them through the branches of the trees if he leaned back on his elbows. “Did you asked for this assignment, or did they just point and tell you to go?”

“Actually, I found the whole plan terribly interesting. I wasn’t entirely sure what the point of it was, but I was interested in how it would play out. Although now, ah…”

“Yes. Suboptimal.”

“Oh, don’t give me that. _Suboptimal_. As though this isn’t your fault.”

“Isn’t, though. Not entirely.” Crawly gave up on the elbow-leaning as a job half-done and lowered himself fully onto the ground. “They both have free will, either or both of them could have said no. If you wanted humans to always do what you tell them, free will seems like a major design flaw.”

“Well. I believe it was a design committee of one, and She didn’t find it necessary to explain herself.”

“No kidding.”

Crawly’s eyes were fixed on the sky, Aziraphale noticed. On the stars?

“Let’s talk about something else,” he suggested, contemplating the almost-bare grapevine in his hands. “Would you like the last of the grapes?”

“Not if you do,” said Crawly, still looking up. The sky was shifting from hazy purple to dark, soft blue, with a full moon rising overhead.

“There are two left. Here.” Aziraphale picked one and held it out to Crawly, who seemed to be only half-listening.

“That’s clever, the sky. ’S lovely. Credit where credit’s due.”

Aziraphale sighed, and stretched out on his stomach next to where Crawly lay in the soft grass. “Do you want this, or not?”

“Oh. Sure. Thanks.”

Without thinking, Aziraphale pressed the fruit to Crawly’s lips. There was a flicker of tongue, just enough to give Aziraphale the feeling that Crawly’s tongue was able to do things it shouldn’t be possible to do with one’s tongue, and then the grape was gone, pressed between Crawly’s teeth, sweet juices bursting in his mouth.

Crawly swallowed. Aziraphale’s fingers were still at his lips.

Everything suddenly felt very still, and very loud. Their heartbeats, their breathing, the grass growing, the stars spinning across the heavens, Aziraphale was acutely aware of all of it. He ran his thumb across Crawly’s lower lip.

“You _are_ a curious one, aren’t you?” Crawly murmured. Aziraphale’s hand stilled. “Go on then, if you like.”

“It’s just that…” That he didn’t know what to do, that he didn’t have a name for this odd feeling tugging behind his ribcage, that he _was_ curious, surely far more curious than he was allowed to be, and look where all that had gotten the humans, and he should have some self-control, he should…

Crawly sighed and reached out to stroke the back of Aziraphale’s neck. “Angel. You don’t have to explain yourself to me.”

Aziraphale wondered how he knew, how he saw that Aziraphale’s every third thought was about how to explain his choices to someone else. Then again, Crawly had been an angel once. Maybe he remembered. Aziraphale wasn’t sure what memories got burned away during an infernal free-fall.

Just a taste, that was all. He’d seen the humans—not on purpose, really, that wouldn’t be invented until later—but there wasn’t much else to look at, was there, and they seemed so delighted, more delighted than one ought to be by pressing one’s food hole against the food hole of another person. Aziraphale liked food. He wanted to know if he’d like the other thing.

He leaned down to Crawly at the same moment Crawly pressed at the back of his neck, which meant the resulting kiss was much less gentle than Aziraphale had been aiming for. It was just a press of lips, soft and warm, and then Crawly licked his lips and it became soft and warm and wet, and then Aziraphale opened his mouth because he wanted to know what Crawly tasted like and Crawly licked into his mouth, and then it seemed impossible to stop.

Aziraphale braced his weight on one arm and wound his free hand through Crawly’s hair. Lovely, long stuff, soft as anything. Dark red, that was supposed to signify, probably, were red snakes the poisonous ones? Aziraphale hadn’t spent much time thinking about snakes until today. Didn’t matter right now, he decided, because Crawly was making delicious noises as Aziraphale’s nails scraped his scalp. He ran his tongue across Aziraphale’s lower lip and pinched it between his teeth. Aziraphale squeaked and pulled away, acutely aware of something—pressure? warmth?—building in his body.

“Enjoying yourself?” asked Crawly.

“Immensely,” Aziraphale admitted, before he could stop himself. “Have you—that is, I don’t know how it is with demons, but angels are—our corporations don’t come with—unless we think about it—”

“Sssh,” said Crawly, using one hand to pull Aziraphale back down to him and the other hand to guide Aziraphale’s fingers to the space between his legs. Aziraphale moaned into Crawly’s mouth as his hand brushed against the hardness under Crawly’s tunic, and a moment later he manifested the same thing for himself. It relieved a bit of the pressure happening around his chest and focused his thoughts much more sharply than he expected.

“Off,” Aziraphale muttered, pulling at Crawly’s dark tunic.

“Turnabout’s—fair play,” Crawly said between kisses.

They broke apart to strip off their clothes. Aziraphale thought they might immediately dive back into each other, but instead they both sat for a moment, each admiring the shape of the other in the moonlight.

“You’re…” Aziraphale started, then trailed off when he realized the only things he could think of were Crawly’s hipbones and the finger marks he wanted to leave on them. “That is to say…”

“I want to fuck your perfect thighs,” said Crawly, and the face he made as the words left his mouth made Aziraphale wonder if he’d meant to.

“Please.” And then they were reaching for each other again, all messy kisses and grabbing hands. Their cocks pressed against each other as Crawly rolled them over so he was on top, and Aziraphale squeezed his eyes shut so tightly he saw stars.

They shouldn’t be doing this. Aziraphale knew this, as surely as he knew his own name. This was emphatically not allowed, lack of orders either way was no excuse, and if worse came to worse there was truly no way he’d be able to talk his way out of it. If he decided to stop, Crawly would let him, Aziraphale would stake his sword on it—well, if he still had one. For all the trouble he’d caused, the demon did seem pretty serious about the whole making-your-own-choices thing.

This was a choice Aziraphale was making, and right or wrong (definitely wrong, a small voice said, you are going to be in so much trouble if anyone finds out, and Someone always finds out) he wasn’t about to stop making it.

He dug his fingers into Crawly’s hips and sank his teeth into the soft skin of Crawly’s neck. “Are you going to let yourself bruise?” he asked, after sucking a mark that would last for days if they were human. “Let an angel mark your skin?”

Crawly gasped as Aziraphale ran his tongue over the teeth marks he’d left. “If that’s what it takes to make you keep doing that, yes, fine, _yes_.” He reached between them and ran the pad of his thumb over the head of Aziraphale’s cock, causing Aziraphale to jerk his head back so quickly that it made a soft _thud_ against the ground.

“Oh—that’s—”

“You look delicious,” Crawly whispered, a slight hiss creeping into his voice. He climbed down Aziraphale’s body, leaving open-mouthed kisses across the downy hair of his chest and the roundness of his belly, until Crawly was nosing against his cock. “I think I simply must taste you,” he said, hitching one of Aziraphale’s legs over his shoulder. He rubbed his cheek against the soft skin of the angel’s inner thigh, and Aziraphale thought he saw Crawly’s tongue dart out of his mouth, smelling the air, which was, he felt, more arousing than it had any right to be.

And then Crawly put his lips on Aziraphale’s prick.

The resulting shout was so loud that a small bird took off from the tree above them and went to find shelter somewhere else with quieter neighbors.

Crawly, it turned out, could do really weird things with his tongue.

Aziraphale’s whole awareness, which had once stretched as high as heaven and as wide as the world, now came down to this: his hands in Crawly’s hair, Crawly’s fingers gripping his thigh, and Crawly’s hot, wet mouth around his cock. The stars behind Aziraphale’s eyes were burning brighter, that pressure in his cock and his belly growing fuller and more insistent.

“Wait,” he managed, and Crawly immediately lifted his head away and levered himself back over Aziraphale so they were face-to-face. “You—what about—” He reached between Crawly’s legs and wrapped a hand around his length. Oh, he was perfect, smooth and hard, and the hiss that whistled through Crawly’s teeth was the most satisfying thing Aziraphale had ever heard. “Like this? Or you said—”

“Thighs,” Crawly managed. “Roll on your side.”

Aziraphale did as he was told, and Crawly nestled snug behind him, one suddenly-slick hand working its way between Aziraphale’s legs, parting them for Crawly’s cock. Crawly’s chest was pressed against his back; when Crawly slid between his legs, Aziraphale felt his moan as much as he heard it. “Perfect,” Crawly sighed, taking Aziraphale’s cock in hand as he began to move between his legs. “You’re a feast, angel.”

There was so much to take in, thought Aziraphale, so much to enjoy, not the least of which was the slick satisfaction of Crawly thrusting again and again between his thighs. Corporations, Aziraphale was learning, had such capacity for pleasure. The perfect sweetness of a grape, the perfect tang of Crawly’s skin, both discoverable with the same mouth, the same tongue, both delightful in wildly different ways. With what very little capacity for coherent thought he had left, Aziraphale gave a mental tip of the hat to the Almighty. And it was good, indeed.

That’s when reality began to fracture.

***

The garden was gone. There was sight, but it was not sight. Souls are not visible, except when they are.

Crawly’s looked like stars, like galaxies flying, embroidered on shifting black and blue, burning fire, and Aziraphale’s looked like eyes, thousands, sleepless, flashing like lightning, and the fire is the light by which the eyes behold, and without the eyes to see it the fire does not exist.

Two souls, there were supposed to be two souls, but then they stretched to their edges and found that they were no longer made up of just themselves. Some of the eyes had blinked and become fire; some of the stars had collapsed and become eyes. The embroidery was flashing in the light, the stitches too well-made to be unpicked.

There was the clear, insistent ringing of a bell, sympathetic vibrations moving between the deathless stars and the sleepless eyes.

There was ecstasy, beyond sight and sound and thought and feeling. It tumbled from one edge to another, across boundless space that was not and throughout endless time that was not. The ringing of the bell grew louder, the stars burned hotter, the eyes flashed brighter, and with a great shudder and a great sigh, the thread was tied off into knots, and all was bound up together.

***

There was a fair amount of shouting after that.

The first round of shouting was the orgasmic kind. No sooner had Aziraphale’s consciousness returned to his body than he was coming in Crawly’s hand; Crawly’s own orgasm apparently came over him at roughly the same time, if the noises and the added wetness were anything to go by. It fairly made Aziraphale’s ears ring.

And then he realized that his ears were already ringing, had been ringing for what felt like forever, why, why were they—

“What did you do?” he cried, just as Crawly yelled, “What in the eternal and everlasting _fuck_?”

They scrambled away from each other, and the next instant both were on their feet and fully clothed.

“What did _I_ do?” shouted Crawly. “What did _you_ do?”

“Nothing! What in heaven’s name would I want with—with _essence mixing_?”

“I don’t know, strike me as bit of a hedonist you do, maybe corporations aren’t quite enough for you to get your angelic rocks off.”

“I’ll have you know that I’ve never—I didn’t even—I don’t know _how_ —”

“That’s clearly not true.”

“Why should I believe you when you say it wasn’t you?”

“Demon, remember, we don’t do that, I’m not supposed to be _able_ to do that—”

“And _yet_ —”

“Yes, I _know_ , I was _there_.” Crawly ran a hand over his face. “Where was _there_ , exactly?”

Aziraphale’s eyebrows drew together as he thought. “Another dimension, I think. Astral plane? As I _said_ , I’ve never done it before.”

“Well, I certainly don’t feel like doing it again.”

“Absolutely not. Utterly terrible idea.”

“And if we can’t do what we did without doing _that—_ ”

“Oh, you may rest assured that none of this will ever happen again. It wasn’t likely to, in any case.” Aziraphale felt slightly ashamed as soon as the words left his mouth. That wasn’t true. If it had only ended in orgasms, he actually had no idea what he would have done. Throw in naked cuddles and all bets would truly have been off.

Crawly’s mouth was tight. “Don’t lie to me. No telling what you would have suggested if all that had stopped just short of the astral plane.”

Aziraphale’s eyes widened. “Are you absolutely sure about that?”

Crawly slunk forward until they were nearly nose to nose. (“ _I seldom slink_ ,” Aziraphale silently scoffed, _my entire angelic ass_.) “As sure as I am that you kissed a demon and _liked_ it.”

_bloody stupid beautiful angel Crawly you absolute and utter idiot bless it bless it BLESS IT_

“Would you stop shouting?” Aziraphale leaned away and pinched the bridge of his nose. He wasn’t sure what that was supposed to accomplish, but it seemed the thing to do.

“If you think this is shouting—”

“And don’t call me beautiful when you’re mad at me—”

“I didn’t say a…” Crawly’s face suddenly became very serious. “…say a thing.”

“You were right,” Aziraphale muttered. “I was lying to you, just then.”

Crawly made an unpleasant noise and rolled his tongue around his mouth as if he’d tasted something sour. “Is that…” He flicked his against his lips. “Shame?”

“Oh, God.” Aziraphale sat down very suddenly.

“Could we not, with the—what? What is it?”

“This is—well, objectively it is. Not good. It’s bad, in fact, potentially very bad, it’s so much worse than I—”

Confusion dawned on Crawly’s face a split second after the words ran through Aziraphale’s mind. “Soul bonding? What in the heaven is that?”

“I don’t know all the details, I’ve only vaguely heard about it. It’s, it’s like—well, what it says on the tin. You tie yourselves together on the astral plane, your souls are bonded. You can feel each other, you know each other’s minds.”

“What? _How_?”

“I don’t know. I’ve now told you everything I’ve heard about it.”

“Who the fuck thought that was a good—” Crawly realized he was shouting at the sky, and made a dismissive hand gesture. “Of course. Who else.” He dropped to the ground across from Aziraphale. “How do you turn it off?”

“As I just said, I’ve told you absolutely everything I know, beginning to end, so it’s safe to assume that for all further questions the answer is _I don’t know_.”

“There has to be some way.”

Aziraphale laughed. He felt rather hysterical. “Does there?”

“Don’t you realize how bad this is? Angel and a demon, linked on the astral plane? Able to know where the other is and hear what the other is thinking? Upstairs and Downstairs would either immediately destroy us or decide we’re perfect weapons.”

“I know.”

“And I can’t decide which would be worse.”

“ _I know_.”

“So until we figure out how to undo it, we have to find a way to, I don’t know, mask it or something.” He took a deep and completely unnecessary breath. “Alright. Let’s see. We can imagine changes in our corporations, and then they become what we imagine, right?”

“Oh, that’s a good idea.”

“I haven’t told you yet.”

“Blast—I must have, listened in, or what have you.”

“Notice how that feels then. If it’s a river of,” Crawly waved his hand to indicate such nuisances as _thoughts_ and _feelings_ , “flowing between us, imagine building a dam, so one branch stops flowing into another. And then put a desert between them.”

They both concentrated for a moment.

“There it is,” said Aziraphale. “Like a door, closed and latched. No light around the edges.”

“Dry riverbed for me, more like,” said Crawly. “Long as it’s worked.”

They both stood. Everything suddenly seemed terribly awkward.

“Well,” said Crawly.

“Indeed.”

“I suppose I shan’t be seeing you.”

“Best not.”

“Unless one of us figures out how to undo it.”

“Of course. Terrible risk, otherwise.”

“Exactly.”

Aziraphale sighed. “I suppose I’d best get back to the gate. Probably shouldn’t have left.”

Crawly had no response to this.

Aziraphale wanted to say he was sorry, that he’d had a wonderful time, truly, right up until…He wanted to say thank you, that was the polite thing, wasn’t it, when you enjoyed yourself with someone, but to say thank you to a demon, to risk being overheard…

He nearly thought the words to Crawly, felt the latch of the door in his mind slip open—and then he realized he was opening himself up again and slammed the latch back down. Apparently it was that easy to slip, that easy to—well. No falling had happened yet, nor would ever, if Aziraphale had anything to say about it.

And so the words stuck in his throat, unsaid. Instead, he went with, “Ah, until next time, then. Good luck, hiding this from the bosses.”

Crawly snorted. “Any luck,” he said, “they’ll forget about me for a few hundred years or so, and we’ll have it sorted by then.”

***

Not long after Aziraphale resumed his post, thunder rolled once more, except this time, it brought orders: block up the wall, then back Upstairs.

So much for luck.


	2. Chapter 2

Luck might be rubbish, but Aziraphale still had some faith in providence. The post-Eden summons turned out to involve a mostly-positive performance review in which no one was asked to produce any flaming swords.

“It looks like the Almighty is going to continue this whole ‘human’ concept,” Gabriel said. Aziraphale could hear the inverted commas as clearly as if Gabriel had made them with his fingers (air quotes were, in fact, still being workshopped by Hell’s R-and-D department). “So if you still want to be our embedded agent on Earth, the job’s yours.”

“Oh.” This meeting was, by all rights, going much better than it should have been. “Would I be…the only one? The whole place seems rather big.”

“There’s only a handful of humans,” said Gabriel. “How much trouble could they be?”

“We’ll do another assessment in a thousand years or so,” said Uriel, “to see if we need to do any strategic re-assignments. Asking you to stay on wasn’t our idea.”

“Started somewhere above our pay grade,” said Michael. “Just passing it along.”

Ah.

There it was.

Aziraphale wasn’t sure if the board of archangels didn’t like him personally, or if they just didn’t like anybody. As either option put him squarely in the “Thumbs Down” column, he supposed it really didn’t matter, but all the same, he wished he knew. It might allow him to gage how spectacularly bad things could get if they got their hands on his secrets.

The poor world wasn’t even a generation old yet, and he had _secrets_. It was…what was the word Crawly had used? _Suboptimal_.

That being said, secrets were more easily kept when you were on assignment several heavenly spheres away from your immediate supervisors. Aziraphale accepted the job offer.

***

Crawly, for his part, had left the garden shortly after Aziraphale was summoned Upstairs from the wall. The place made him uneasy, especially now that he was the only human-shaped being hanging around it. He made his way out into the surrounding desert, still crossing his fingers that Downstairs would decide he’d done a good enough job to be left to his own devices.

He hadn’t been traveling for more than an hour when he noticed the fly buzzing around his head. “Badly done, Crawly,” the fly said, in Beelzebub’s voice. “We are pleazzzed. Get down here to file your report in triplicate, and then it’zzz back up top with you.”

The fly dissolved into a shower of ash. Crawly heaved an extremely put-upon sigh, took a step forward, and sank into the sand.

***

They spent the next ten centuries emphatically not thinking or feeling at each other. From time to time they’d end up in the same crowd (the world was still so small, after all, even though it was growing every minute). Usually they pretended not to see each other, but every so often one of them would happen across the other so suddenly that not making small talk would have been unforgivably rude. Aziraphale was in the process of discovering that he could be rude (he often tried to forget this, as rudeness didn’t seem very angelic), but being unforgivably-anything was the provenance of demons, who were as far from angelic as one got, and thus: small talk.

That’s how he learned that the demon he was inexplicably soul bonded with had changed his name to Crowley. The idea that Aziraphale might— _might_ —have been thinking about his soul…soul mate? Soul partner? He had so many questions—by the wrong name for hundreds of years bothered him, almost as much as the idea that he’d been thinking about Crowley at all.

The humans were inventing so many clever and lovely things, like writing and alcohol, along with some less clever and more deeply unpleasant things, like murder. (After the advent of several Italian noble families and the invention of the mystery novel, Aziraphale would revise his opinion that murder was not clever, but this reconsideration wouldn’t occur for several thousand years.)

Aziraphale wished he had someone to talk about it all with. Heaven had indeed done an assessment several centuries down the line and assigned more angels to Earth postings, but nearly all of them had been recalled following the Nephilim debacle.

( _What_ a bollocking that had been. First time Aziraphale had been back Upstairs since his permanent job offer, didn’t even get to sneak away to research soul bonding, accidental or otherwise, had to sit through hour after hour of Gabriel taking everyone point-by-point through what _exactly_ had gone wrong there. It was, however, the only time to date that Aziraphale had been singled out for praise by the board of archangels.

“Take Aziraphale,” he’d said, clicking his fingers to advance the slide behind him ( _How This Could Have Been Avoided_ , subtitle: _You Absolute Fools_ , slide one hundred seventy-three of two hundred fifty-four). “You don’t see him messing around with the daughters of men. Pure as the new-driven…what’s the cold white stuff, again?”

“Snow,” supplied Michael.

“Pure as the new-driven snow, Aziraphale is. Devoted to the _work_ , not to using his corporation for non-standard purposes.”

Aziraphale gave silent and profound thanks that Gabriel understood neither irony nor blushing. It was the only positive thought he had for the rest of the meeting; forty days and forty nights of rain had been more tolerable than this.)

It had been straight back to Earth after that. Aziraphale felt he really couldn’t risk more time hanging around Upstairs—the longer he spent around other angels, the greater the likelihood he’d be sniffed out. As it were. Could they smell Crowley on him, over a thousand years after? He realized he didn’t actually know how they’d be able to tell, which only made everything worse, because now he really had no idea how to protect them. Him. Himself.

At least he never had to worry about running into other angels on Earth. They were either placed too far away from him or sent down as reinforcements for specific jobs, only to head back up as soon as the assignment was done. Aziraphale was grateful for the help, usually. Raphael did all the talking on their most recent job; all Aziraphale had to do was sit under the oak trees and eat the food he was offered.

 _It’s not so bad,_ he told himself, again and again and again like a prayer, every time he felt the disquiet creeping further in at the edges of his mind. _Not so…not so…_

The disquiet wasn’t tied to the anxiety of discovery, much as Aziraphale would have preferred that. It was because of the blasted door in his mind, locked up tight.

It turned out that having your soul linked to another soul and keeping that link sealed off was deeply uncomfortable. The feeling was hard to describe, because it didn’t live anywhere in Aziraphale’s corporation. It was entirely mental, and he couldn’t imagine it away. It made him feel parched, irritated…incomplete.

_Absolutely terrible. Why does anyone voluntarily do this?_

It grew worse with time. What he had been able to ignore immediately post-Eden had become the psychological equivalent of an unrelenting migraine by the time he was done with the Mamre job. It had been long enough since the Nephilim scolding. He could show his face Upstairs again, just long enough to look for answers.

But first, he decided, with extreme reluctance, he needed some relief.

He needed to find Crowley.

***

Crowley, as it happened, was asleep. He had recently discovered sleeping, and had taken to it with the enthusiasm the angel had taken to—well. Anyway. It made him oblivious to the passage of time and to his own senses, which was a comfort on both counts. Eternal consciousness come with pros and cons, and he was grateful he’d found the temporary off-switch. Besides, sleeping on the job struck him as very demonic.

He was napping in a cave—a nice, warm, sandy cave, far from the things of man—his mind blissfully dark, the rough and irritated edges numbed by the endless blackness. Crowley didn’t dream.

He was therefore fairly confused and, frankly, more than a little frightened when the darkness began to gradually lighten, like a candle-bearer was walking toward him through a tunnel, if the candle were made of dawn.

The candle-bearer was Aziraphale.

Crowley sat up quickly and pulled his knees up to his chest.

“What are you doing here?” he asked. “Am I still asleep?”

Aziraphale sat down with the dawn-candle. “You are.” He looked around the cave. “Why do you do it?”

“’S…relaxing.” He shrugged, and then a thought flashed across his mind that made him considerably less relaxed. “How did you find me? Does the—you know—the link thing open when I’m asleep?” He wanted to kick himself for not considering that possibility.

“No, no.” Aziraphale’s voice was soothing. Crowley hated how much he liked it. “It’s an angelic thing. We visit people’s dreams all the time.”

Crowley scrubbed a hand across his face. “Do you mean any member of the heavenly host could wander into my brain while I’m sleeping?”

Aziraphale chewed his lower lip. _Stop it_ , thought Crowley, _or you’ll make me want to do that for you._ “I’m…not sure. I doubt it’s crossed anyone else’s mind, since demons aren’t supposed to sleep. That’s part of why I’m here. I wanted to let you know I’m about to go looking for answers.”

“ _About_ to—hell’s sake, angel, what have you been doing these past thousand years?”

“Lying low! We’ve had some…HR adjustments, I don’t have time to fully explain.” _Trust me_ , Aziraphale wanted to say. He didn’t. He couldn’t ask Crowley to trust him while he was fighting desperately against trusting Crowley.

(He’d let Crowley touch his body, Crowley was connected to his soul, not once in a thousand years had he felt Crowley try to get inside his mind, he wanted so badly to have…

It didn’t matter what he wanted. It couldn’t matter.)

“I’m about to start investigating,” he continued, “as soon as we’re done here. But I had to ask you something.”

Crowley tried very hard to keep his face neutral. “What?”

“Are you…That is to say, is your, well, your mind, I suppose—”

Crowley sighed. _Bloody beautiful babbling angel._ “Am I going mental because we’ve tried to turn off this blessed mind link?”

“Yes,” breathed Aziraphale, clearly relieved that Crowley had said it first. “Exactly that.”

“Yeah,” Crowley said. “I’ve had more enjoyable experiences.”

They were both trying very hard not to think about a tangle of lips and hands and flushed skin and sweet grapes, and they were both failing spectacularly.

Aziraphale cleared his throat. “I agree. And so, would you be amenable—normally I’d never ask, you understand—”

“Of course.”

“Only it’s become so blasted difficult to concentrate—”

“Mm.”

“And I need to keep a clear head for this research—”

“Naturally—”

“So we can fix this and we don’t have to worry about it anymore.”

“I see.”

“So, can we…open back up? Keep our minds blank, or something, and just…breathe, for a while?”

Crowley raised an eyebrow. “You’d really let a demon inside your mind?”

“You’ve already been there, haven’t you? And you won’t find anything. Like I said, we can just, I don’t know, focus on the darkness, not think of anything. Unless you have a better idea.”

Crowley had to admit, if only to himself, that he did not. “Alright, then. Fine.”

Aziraphale took a deep breath. “Excellent. Whenever you’re—”

But Crowley had already let go, got rid of the dams and the walls and the doors and the locks. He tried to hold on to the darkness, to the black blissful oblivion he wrapped himself in when he was asleep, but it seemed impossible, especially as Aziraphale let out a sigh that resembled nothing so much as a noise made by post-coital humans. (Crowley knew this not because he was personally engaging with humans in sins of the flesh, but because the concept of privacy appeared to still be in beta test phase.)

The taste of Aziraphale’s relief bloomed on Crowley’s tongue like sweet water. Opening their minds back up to each other felt like balm to a burn, a kiss to a scrape— _a kiss a kiss a kiss_ , Crowley’s mind had taken that thought and run with it, and that would never do—so he found the blackness again, that cool dark that washes over you when you sink into sleep after too many hours lying awake, staring at the roof of a cave and counting the ways your immediate supervisor could decide to eviscerate you for treason…Bless it, that was a thought, wasn’t it, and Aziraphale was making a face like he could taste Crowley’s fear, which was probably exactly what was happening.

“Sorry,” mumbled Crowley, “sorry…”

“Shhh.” Aziraphale reached for Crowley’s hand, a move that sufficiently stunned both of them enough to make their minds go blank. “No need to apologize.” He swept his thumb back and forth across the back of Crowley’s hand.

Time is a construct that has more meaning in some contexts than it does in others. It is famously useless in dreams, so Crowley really had no idea how long the two of them sat there, letting the tide of each other move between them until all the crooked ways were made straight and all the rough places made smooth. But there came a point when Crowley knew that if he looked at Aziraphale any longer, he was going to do something spectacularly stupid.

Gently, slowly, he pulled his hand away. “Feels better, now.”

Aziraphale’s face was unreadable. “It rather does, doesn’t it.”

They pulled back into themselves, locking doors that were not doors and damming rivers that were not rivers. Aziraphale stood.

“I’ll let you know what I find, either way. Where should I look for you?”

“I have a job in Haran coming up. I’ll head that way, I’m sure we’ll find each other.”

“Of course.” Aziraphale stood there as if he wasn’t quite sure how to say goodbye.

 _goodbye kisses for demons husbands_ , Crowley found himself thinking, immediately followed by _oh would you **shut up**. _His brain did, but it didn’t matter either way, because Aziraphale couldn’t hear him now.

“Ah, sleep well then,” the angel said. “Sorry for interrupting.”

“Not at all.” Crowley waved a hand. “Don’t worry about it.”

Aziraphale picked up the dawn candle and walked away, down the tunnel that wasn’t there.

Crowley woke up in the dark, sandy cave, cock hard as anything. _With a corporation like this_ , he thought, _who needs Hell?_

***

The Heavenly Records Office was meticulously organized, which Aziraphale found irritating. On the one hand, it should be easy to find what he was looking for; on the other, it meant he would have to put everything back perfectly to avoid detection.

Because, he reminded himself, Someone Always Noticed.

He’d gone up the back stairs, used all the long-way-round routes, had five different excuses and answers ready depending on which angels he might run into and what their ranks were, but he was still incredibly nervous. He told himself he didn’t have to be, he shouldn’t be, this was Heaven, this was home, he belonged here, it was fine, it was all _fine_ —

Another angel appeared out of nowhere just before Aziraphale turned the corner into the corridor with the Records Office. Before he had any time to react, the other angel just…walked past him. No questions, comments, or concerns. It was as though Aziraphale wasn’t even there.

He hadn’t forgotten his body, had he? Oh, the paperwork would be a nightmare if—

He flinched and looked down at his wrist, where a red welt proved that he had just pinched himself and indeed had not forgotten his body. So, that was sorted. He was as good as invisible.

It was the best he could have possibly hoped for, and yet he felt vaguely disappointed.

But here he was now, Heavenly Records Office, a blessedly un-staffed room crammed with filing cabinet after filing cabinet of memoranda, incident reports, and miracle receipt reconciliation sheets.

Aziraphale pulled open the middle drawer of a cabinet labeled “S”, found himself further in the alphabet than he had wanted, and began to work backwards.

 _Swords (flaming)_ —he flipped past that one as quickly as he could— _supernovas (development report), star systems (binary)_ …ah, there it was: _soul_.

He pushed the hanging file open to find that it contained a single sheet of paper, with a single line of instruction: _Please direct all inquiries to the Office of the Almighty_.

So that was a dead end.

He tried _marriage_ , next, but they didn’t have a folder for it. They didn’t have one for _essence mixing_ either, and the only document the _astral plane_ folder contained was the plane’s creation record.

Aziraphale was beginning to panic. If above-board angelic soul-marriages didn’t have a paper trail (which made very little sense to him: this was Heaven, and there was _always_ a paper trail) then he didn’t know what he was going to do. He couldn’t simply _ask_ someone, not without risking discovery, which he simply couldn’t bring himself to do. Forget what would happen to him (nothing too terrible, he hoped, this was Heaven, he was an angel, he _belonged_ —but all the same, he remembered the war, and he was bloody soul-married to one of the Fallen), the shame alone was enough to keep him quiet. If this visit didn’t turn up anything, then he and Crowley were truly on their own.

Could you be on your own with another person? Or were you really just together?

Not the time, he told himself, pacing between the cabinets and wracking his brain for other phrases to try. _Bond_ , maybe, or _binding_.

And then the door swung open.

Aziraphale reached for the nearest drawer and pulled it open, making a show of flipping through the hanging folders as though he was _extremely busy, thank you, we’ll have to catch up another time_.

Footsteps wound through the maze of cabinets.

 _Oh no, no no no_. He recognized the sound of those sensible, spat-covered shoes.

“Aziraphale. It’s been a hundred years if it’s been a day.”

It had, in fact, been several hundred years. “Oh, ah. Hello, Michael.” Aziraphale tried to keep his tone casual, mildly distracted, oh-don’t-mind-me-absolutely-nothing-to-see-here.

“I didn’t realize you’d been called back Upstairs.”

“Just following up,” he said, eyes still on the folders, hoping they’d help him come up with a believable excuse. He’d opened the _N_ drawer. _Narwhals, nebulae—_ oh, thank _Heaven_ —“Having a bit of a look at the Nephilim files. Trying to really understand what went wrong there.”

“Angels and humans don’t mix, biologically speaking,” said Michael, her voice clipped. “At least in terms of reproduction.”

“So it was a purely biological attraction?” He flipped through the papers contained in the _Nephilim_ folder, aiming for “clinical” and “detached” and steadfastly avoiding eye contact. “Or was there a spiritual element involved as well?”

Michael scoffed. “Spiritual?”

“Well, one hears of such things, among angels at least.”

“But that’s like with like, isn’t it? Angels with angels, perhaps humans with humans, I don’t know, that’s not my area. That’s what we sent you down there for.”

Aziraphale selected a paper at random, pulled it out, and made a show of scanning it. “I believe the humans, ah, are capable of a type of spiritual bond. Perhaps not as literal as what I’ve heard we’re capable of.” He pretended the paper didn’t have what he was looking for and put it back in the folder.

“What, soul-tying? No one’s had time for that since Herself decided on the Creation project. It’s been at least two millennia since I’ve heard anyone mention it.”

“I see. Did you ever know anyone who was?” He selected another paper and frowned at it.

“It’s possible,” said Michael, “but one tended to be private about it, and it was a very long time ago. Why do you ask?”

Blast, he’d reached the end of the file. He flipped back to the beginning as though there was something he might have missed. “Ever striving to understand the workings of Her Creation,” he said, extracting a memo that was signed by Gabriel but had almost assuredly been drafted by a secretary. “Ah, here we are.” He held his place in the folder with an index finger while he speed read the missive, extremely conscious of Michael’s attention. “That’s all I needed.” He put the paper back in the file and closed the drawer. “Good to see you,” he said, finally turning to face Michael. “I’d best be getting back.”

“Take the side staircase, would you?” The inflection suggested a question, the tone of voice did not. “There’s a human dreaming of angels descending and ascending, nothing to worry about, but we could use the set-dressing.” She gave him a small smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes.

***

He’d made himself exit the Records Office in a calm, orderly fashion, and he’d maintained the façade until he reached the bottom of the side staircase, which was indeed uncommonly crowded. The other angels turned around and started back up once they’d reached the bottom, but Aziraphale continued forward and stepped out onto Earth. He passed a young man sleeping on the ground, using a stone for a pillow, spared him the thought of _Surely that can’t be comfortable_ , and continued on his way toward Haran.

He had to find Crowley and tell him that there were hardly any answers, almost certainly no solution.

That they were, frankly, royally fucked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks once more to [the_moonmoth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_moonmoth) for beta reading!


	3. Chapter 3

**Rome, 43 A.D.**

Crowley was in a foul mood.

It was one of those days when all the inconveniences of the city got to him at once. Usually he was quite the city being, Crowley, liked being around people, also much easier to meet quotas ahead of schedule, but today it all seemed to be backfiring, the heat, the noise, the general annoyance of existing side by side with other people. It didn’t help that he hadn’t seen Aziraphale in about a hundred years, and he was fighting a beast of a soul migraine.

 _Soul migraine,_ that’s what he’d taken to calling them. _Pathetic._

He actually had encountered Aziraphale within the last century, several times, but the situations had all been horribly timed or afforded no privacy whatsoever, and thus had brought him no relief, so he didn’t really think they counted as _seeing_ his soul husband.

 _Soul husband. Even worse_.

The situation was bad all round, to be honest about it, and hadn’t changed much in the last seven centuries or so. No records, no institutional memory—that Aziraphale could access anyway; Heaven sounded a lot less chummy than Crowley remembered. (Had they decided the Fallen had caused trouble because they were all friends? Crowley hadn’t even been that close with them, still got caught in the crossfire. And Aziraphale had mentioned all this to _Michael_ , for Hell’s sake, the very last angel Crowley wanted to get wind of this. He still had exceptionally vivid memories of her wielding a very large sword.)

Seven hundred years of constantly looking over their shoulders, fighting to keep the passages between their minds blocked off, sitting together every century or so to relieve the withering exhaustion that resulted, find each other and open up without really connecting, just to save themselves from going mad. It was torture.

It was the best he was going to get.

Crowley couldn’t decide which feeling he hated more: the aching exhaustion that pushed him nearly to the breaking point before he managed to find Aziraphale, or the half-satisfied reaching he felt in his chest when he and Aziraphale parted for another hundred years. 

Crowley took off his glasses and rubbed at his eyes. He wanted to sleep for a decade, he wanted to get roaring drunk, he wanted to track down Aziraphale and haul him back to the rented rooms Crowley was occupying, press him into the bed, and do unspeakable things to him.

So he had a _tendre_ for his literal soul husband.

Whatever.

Just, was it too much to ask for Aziraphale to…like him? At least a little? Surely he had, once; he was the one who had initiated things in the garden. Hell’s sake, Crowley remembered that episode as freshly as if it had happened yesterday.

He put his glasses back on.

Sleeping for a decade would mess up his paperwork schedule, and ravishing Aziraphale was right out, so Crowley settled on the _roaring drunk_ option.

“Whatever’s drinkable,” he told the woman staffing the taberna. He slid his coins across the counter and received a cup of wine in return. He had just taken a first, excessively deep sip when he heard the last voice he would have expected.

“Crowley?”

He forced himself to swallow his wine like a normal human-shaped being instead of choking on it.

Aziraphale, it turned out, was in town. Crowley desperately reminded himself that this didn’t change the status of the potential for ravishing, i.e., it was still right out.

“Well, fancy meeting you here.” Aziraphale pulled up a stool. He looked so inviting, with his white tunic, and his fluffy hair, and his whole blessed general demeanor. He looked comfortable. Crowley wanted to bury his face in that stupid, beautiful neck. “Still a demon?”

“What kind of a question is that? What else am I going to be, an aardvark?” _Sorry_ , he almost said, _sorry, I’ve just had a bad day and I miss you. Aardvark, where did that even come from?_

Aziraphale, oddly, seemed unfazed. “I suppose not.” He raised his cup. “Salutaria.”

Crowley could drink to that. Crowley could drink to just about anything right now.

“In Rome long?” Aziraphale continued.

Full of questions today, he was. “Just stopped in for a quick temptation,” Crowley lied. He’d been hanging around for months; the place was an absolute gold mine of infernal doings, even in the midst of the so-called Pax Romana (Crowley had been to Jerusalem in the past decade; try telling anyone there that it was supposed to be peacetime).

“I’ve been meaning to try Petronius’ new place,” Aziraphale continued. “I’ve heard he does remarkable things to oysters.”

Aziraphale’s love of the gastronomic finer things clearly hadn’t abated since Eden. Crowley partook from time to time, but had never developed quite the same passion. “Do you know, I’ve never eaten an oyster.”

To say Aziraphale’s face _lit up_ would not come within fifty miles of hyperbole. Crowley would be suspicious of the angel’s good mood if he weren’t enjoying it so bloody much.

“Oh, well, let me tempt you—” Crowley raised an eyebrow, and Aziraphale seemed to realize what he’d said. “Oh. Oh no, I suppose that’s your job.” But his face didn’t fall, and his eyes didn’t cloud. He had a devilishly arch look on his face, except that no actual devil was capable of having a mouth that perfect, Crowley was sure of it.

“I dunno, angel, you seem a dab hand. Could put me out of business.”

“I highly doubt—”

Crowley drained his wine and thumped his cup down on the counter. The serving girl glared at him. “So. Where do we find this Petronius?”

The place was, it turned out, not terribly far from the rooms Crowley was renting. Aziraphale ordered the oysters, Crowley ordered the wine, they were having a jolly good time of it, and Crowley had decided not to ask questions. Maybe Aziraphale thought the whole pardon-me-whilst-I-meld-my-consciousness-with-yours thing would be more pleasant if he’d eaten beforehand.

It was a lovely evening, soft weather, and it had finally cooled down enough that the city no longer stank to high heaven.

(Sewers were all well and good, Crowley explained to Aziraphale, but throwing waste into the street rather ruined the effect. “I don’t love it here,” he confessed.

“Really? Louche upper class, constant political intrigue, I would have thought rather the opposite.”

“Oh, it’s good for business, but the fact that it’s a slave state isn’t canceled out by aqueducts and heated floors.”

“I quite agree.”

“And it’s a _terrible_ place to be a woman.”

“Isn’t everywhere?”

“Some worse than others, and trust me, this is worse.”

“Well, how many empires have we seen come and go? Perhaps one day Rome will be forgotten.”

“Someday everything will be forgotten.”

“That’s a thought that requires more wine.”

“You’re absolutely right.”)

They were laughing about something now, Crowley wasn’t really sure what, or how they’d gotten on the subject. There had been a lot of wine. He was in that perfect spot on the continuum of drunkenness when everything was funny and his toes felt tingly.

“Now what did you do that for?” Aziraphale giggled, apropos of whatever story Crowley had just finished.

“I really don’t know,” Crowley said, in part because he couldn’t remember. He was in the midst of a raging debate with himself over whether or not he should brush one of his feet against Aziraphale’s ankle.

“Would you like the last oyster?” Aziraphale asked.

“Nah, all yours.”

“Didn’t you like them?”

“They were delightful,” Crowley said, watching Aziraphale tip the last one back and swallow. _Oh, the other uses for that mouth_. “It’s just,” he cleared his throat, “it’s obvious how much you love them.”

“Mmm.” Aziraphale’s mouth twisted into the funny little smirk he always made when he was trying to hide a smile. Crowley had only seen him do it a handful of times, but he’d memorized every single one of them. The dimples alone should have been a crime.

_Do it now, you could do it now and if he doesn’t catch on you can just say you didn’t realize his foot was there—_

Crowley felt Aziraphale’s sandal against the inside of his shin.

He was at a loss for words, unless _yes_ and _why_ counted, but one seemed inappropriate in public and the other carried too high a risk of Aziraphale stopping. His brain was cycling through a thought pattern he would become familiar with over the next few millennia, a pattern that started with _How much wine_ have _we had?,_ moved along to _What have I done to deserve this?_ , took a sharp left detour into _You know what you did_ , and always ended up stuck at _I want_ …

Aziraphale appeared to take Crowley’s silence as disinterest, as his foot was now beating a hasty retreat. Crowley noticed quickly enough to bring his feet together, trapping Aziraphale’s between his ankles.

He cleared his throat. “Under no circumstances are you to mistake this for a complaint, but…” The words _aren’t we a bit forward this evening?_ were easily read on Crowley’s face.

“As it happens,” said Aziraphale, “I’ve had rather a bit of wine.”

Thank Someone for liquid courage, then. “As it happens, I live rather close to here.”

“I thought you were only in town for a short while.” Or was that “short wile”? Crowley’s attention was predominantly directed at Aziraphale’s raised eyebrow and the smug expression that accompanied it.

“Even a demon needs a place to lay his head.” (This was not, technically speaking, true for demons as a whole, but it was true for Crowley.)

Aziraphale raised his cup to his lips and took a long, slow sip of wine. “I think I need to see such a place. In the name of due diligence. Research across enemy lines, and all.”

Crowley nodded slowly. This was a familiar exercise. “Whereas I…can’t resist the chance to have an angel in my clutches.”

Crowley couldn’t fool any heavenly and/or demonic beings that might be watching, but he could arrange for all of his neighbors to conveniently not notice him bringing another man home at a truly ungodly hour of the night.

“It’s…simple,” Aziraphale said, once they were safely ensconced in Crowley’s room. “I suppose I was expecting something…”

“Ostentatious? Best left to the nobles, that.” Aziraphale was here, Aziraphale was _here_ , with him, it had been too long, he liked this far too much, this was dangerous, this was a terrible decision that he was absolutely going to make, as soon as he figured out how to get Aziraphale to make it too. “The bed’s comfortable and well-made, that’s all that really matters.”

Aziraphale stepped closer. “Is it?”

“Oh, yeah, nothing worse than a lumpy mattress, or poky straw, or a bedframe that creaks too much. That’s a feather mattress, that is.”

“And the bedframe?”

“Silent as the grave, if it knows what’s good for it.”

They were practically nose to nose now, just the smallest of gaps, did he dare—

Aziraphale’s lips were on his, hands on either side of his face. Crowley’s arms went around Aziraphale’s neck, and then their mouths were open, and this was no prelude, no warm-up, this was a four-thousand-year drought that had abruptly ended, and Crowley knew it wasn’t about to stop, no matter what they broke or accidentally set on fire.

What were they going to do, knit their souls together on the metaphysical plane a _second_ time? 

They kissed longer and more deeply than they would have been able to if they had actually needed to breathe, but all the same, it felt like Aziraphale pulled away far too soon. “I’m terribly sorry,” he said, “I really should have asked.”

“Don’t care,” declared Crowley, and pulled him back in.

“There was no reason to assume—” Aziraphale was trying to talk between kisses and Crowley was trying to render this impossible. “Just because—mm—we’re soul—mmmm.”

Crowley licked the curve of Aziraphale’s ear before whispering, “Do I look like I’m having a bad time?”

Aziraphale pulled back and gave Crowley a long, appreciative look. “I would say not, but it’s a bit hard to tell with the spectacles, dear.”

 _Dear_. What had he done to deserve _dear_ , and how could he do it again?

And then Aziraphale’s fingers were stroking up his neck to where his glasses hooked behind his ears. “May I?”

Crowley was about to do his level best to get Aziraphale naked and gasping just because he _missed_ him, so in for a denarius, in for an aureus, as far as he was concerned. He nodded. Aziraphale took off the glasses, folded them, and gingerly set them down on a side table before turning back to look Crowley right in the eyes. For a minute Crowley thought he was going to say something inane like, “Your eyes are beautiful,” and was both pleased and more disappointed than he wanted to admit when what Aziraphale actually said was, “I don’t know how closely your lot keeps track of the miracles, but I haven’t any oil, and if my side notices that I’ve used my allotment to, ah, prepare myself, things could get sticky. As it were. Whereas if you, for yourself, if your people don’t track things too carefully—”

“Angel.”

“Yes?”

“You can just say you want to fuck me.”

Aziraphale blinked once—it was almost comical—pursed his lips, and began to pull at Crowley’s clothes. “Would you get this thing off?”

“Not the only thing I’m gonna get off,” Crowley mumbled as he disrobed.

“No it’s not,” Aziraphale said, folding his tunic and laying it on the table next to Crowley’s glasses.

“You’ve found bedroom confidence in the past four thousand years, angel. Seeking solace outside your husband’s bed?”

Crowley had meant it as a joke, but Aziraphale looked genuinely shocked at such a suggestion. “Absolutely not, Crowley. I know we didn’t plan—and I certainly don’t expect you to—but I don’t…have these feelings…for humans.”

Crowley could either process that statement or initiate the process of getting completely wrecked by an angel of the Lord. The latter option was infinitely more attractive at the moment. He reached out, pulled Aziraphale close to him, nuzzled into that beautiful neck like he’d wanted to do all evening. “Show me, then. Show me what’s just for me.”

“Angel,” Crowley gasped, as Aziraphale moved two fingers inside him, “this fucking—mind thing—I can’t keep it closed—”

“Might as well do our centennial routine while we’re at it,” Aziraphale said, pressing kisses against the knobs of Crowley’s spine. “Two birds, one stone.”

As soon as they opened their minds back up to each other—it wasn’t so much the easy opening of a door as the door being blown off its hinges—Crowley knew he wouldn’t be able to keep his mind carefully blank.

_fuck yes fuck angel bless it_

_Crowley dear oh God_

_could we not bring Her into this_

_sorry didn’t mean_

_hush it’s alright yes there fuck fuck fuck_

Crowley was on his knees, holding on to the bedframe for dear life, Aziraphale buried inside him. No chance of betraying state secrets when your mind was full of _yes right there do that again_. He could taste Aziraphale’s desire, it sat heavy on his tongue like wine, he wanted to drink it, he was already drunk on it.

Aziraphale covered one of Crowley’s hands with his own.

_close so close_

_come on then love_

Aziraphale hid his face in the crook of Crowley’s neck and groaned as he came.

_you you you you you_

_yes and you_

Crowley felt Aziraphale slide out of him, was hazily aware of Aziraphale’s hands guiding him to turn over and shift down to lie sprawled on the feather mattress while Aziraphale hitched one of Crowley’s legs over his shoulder.

_shall I suck you_

_celestial eternity_

_pardon_

_yes angel that means yes yes yes_

Crowley had been right: so many other uses for that mouth. He buried his fingers in Aziraphale’s hair and held on for dear life.

_I’m going to come against the tongue you use to sing Her praises_

And Crowley did.

Aziraphale pulled off and swallowed. “Hm.”

“What is it?”

“It’s a bit like oysters.” And he giggled.

The presence of a giggling angel in his bed sent Crowley right over the edge into full-fledged post-coital laughter. He closed his eyes and flung an arm across his face. “Are you going to think of me every time you eat an oyster, now?”

“I suppose I might.” When Crowley opened his eyes, Aziraphale was sitting primly on the edge of the mattress, and he was glowing. “Um. Angel. You’ve become a decent substitute for an oil lamp.”

Aziraphale started. “Oh dear. That is. Most unusual. I think. Still no one to ask.” He turned his hand over, examining it, and flexed his fingers. Crowley’s mind immediately flew to what those fingers had done to him earlier; he tried to drag his thoughts back from that path, as Aziraphale could still hear them.

Aziraphale didn’t appear to be paying attention, however. His glow quickly faded as he stood and began to get dressed. “Well, at least we didn’t take an unexpected visit to the astral plane this time, did we?” Gone was all the confidence of the angel who had slid his foot up Crowley’s leg, who had kissed Crowley senseless and bent him over his own bedframe. Gone was that taste of desire; it had been replaced by peppery nervousness.

“Not that I noticed,” said Crowley. “And I think we both would have. It’s good to know, really, that we can do—this—without getting all metaphysical, necessarily.”

“It is, I suppose,” said Aziraphale, fastening his sandals. Crowley could feel him easing that mental door shut again, and reluctantly shut off his side of things. He felt better than he had in years, and hated that he would have to wait at least a century to have this again.

He sighed and put his own clothes back on. “See you in a hundred years or so?”

“I should think so.” Aziraphale was at the door now. It already felt like he was miles away. “Although…I’ve been thinking of going farther afield. Britain, perhaps. So. Look for me there?”

Crowley managed a half smile. “I will.”

And Aziraphale was away like a thief in the night.

Crowley replayed _Look for me there?_ in his mind the way he might have replayed a goodbye kiss, if the world were soft, or a goodnight kiss, if the world were kind.

He was ending the night—or starting the morning, there was the telltale light on the horizon, bless it—with at least as many questions as he’d had when he started. How did Aziraphale find him? Why was he suddenly so eager to end a four-millennium dry spell? He should probably have a question about the glowing, but that was easily chalked up to “regular weird angel shit”, no real mystery there. And why, after one of the finer fucks of the century, had Aziraphale practically bolted?

Crowley burrowed into the feather mattress—he was caught up on his paperwork and could sleep through any amount of light the sun threw at him—and let all the lovely filthy things they’d thought at each float through his mind as he drifted off.

_close so close_

_come on then love_

And then he was wide awake again.

 _love love_ _love_

Fuck.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As every, many thanks to [the_moonmoth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_moonmoth) for catching continuity slips, making sure I don't sound like an American fool, and being a fantastic cheerleader.


	4. Chapter 4

**Wessex, Britain**

Crowley clung desperately to the idea that Aziraphale would forget. They weren’t going to see each other for another hundred years; that was plenty of time to conveniently not remember something, or at least to have the good manners to pretend. So Crowley made his way to Britain, circa 150 or so, and proceeded to look for Aziraphale.

Fifty years later he began to wonder if Aziraphale was avoiding him. By the time the Christians rolled in during the fourth century it had become a strong suspicion, and by the time the Romans rolled out around the fifth it had become practically undeniable. When the Angles and Saxons invaded in the sixth, Crowley could feel a soul migraine coming on, which made him especially cross. (They were unpredictable buggers, it turned out—this was his first one in nearly five hundred years after getting them every century like clockwork. It was as though his soul had tried to protect him by not reminding him what he was missing, the same way you sort of forgot what kissing felt like if you went too long without it, a fact that was now painfully relevant. Crowley’s soul, it turned out, could only keep the whole self-preservation thing up for so long.)

He spent most of the seventh century asleep. Aziraphale could come find him in his dreams, if he wanted it badly enough.

Evidently he didn’t.

When Crowley emerged from the very cozy tree trunk he’d been sleeping in (lovely things, trees, nobody ever bothered you when you slept in a tree), he discovered two things: firstly, the eighth century was right around the corner, and secondly, peace had broken out over a significant portion of the Isle, something to do with a High King named Arthur and the motto “Not might is right, but might for right,” which stank to high heaven of, well, heaven. 

He began to make a mental to-do list.

Number One: Figure out what infernal-adjacent things happened while asleep; complete paperwork to take credit for them.

Number Two: Incite chaos for fun and profit.

Number Three: Track down angel, give him a proper dressing-down, do _not_ attempt to actually undress him while doing so.

Brocéliande was a lovely wood, Aziraphale thought, if you didn’t mind the mad weather, the risk of wandering into the Vale of No Return , or the fact that it liked to pop up in different parts of the country. As it was, Aziraphale had begun to suspect that he was a homebody at heart. The late seventh century wasn’t the best time to realize this, particularly when one was imbedded in a society of questing knights and was currently taking a turn guarding a magical fountain that exerted a certain amount of control over the aforementioned mad weather.

The things he did for his job.

“Find King Arthur, they said,” he muttered under his breath. “Peace and concord, they said.” He was doing his best, but peace and concord was a tall order when everyone was a bit mad for quarterstaffs and swords and the like. “Not might _is_ right, but might _for_ right,” he repeated, as he did every time he felt the doubt creep in. If the phrase had been a stone he turned in his pocket when he was worried, it would be worn smooth.

But there was nothing to worry about. Guarding the fountain was an easy task in an isolated wood, far from the latest uprising and turf wars, although if one looked at it in a certain light, it smacked of shirking duty. Aziraphale added that to his list of things he wouldn’t allow himself to think about. Shirking duty, the moral complexities of power, Cr—

No.

Mental recitation went against the whole spirit of the list.

If he were going to think about the…last item, he’d only turn himself into a puddle longing and regret. How much clearer could he have been than _Look for me there_? He refused to believe Crowley’s absence was by chance. They’d run into each other all over the Near East for millennia; there was no way that they could both be on the same tiny island without bumping into each other.

Maybe Crowley had taken one look at his literal post-coital glow and gone _nope, too much, no thank you_.

Honestly, that was fine. It was. It was the way things were supposed to be. And Aziraphale was muddling along very nicely, truly, and the edges of his soul were not feeling the least bit ragged, thank you _so_ much for asking.

Mercy, but standing next to a fountain waiting for someone to come along and try to pour water on it so he could shout at them was a bloody boring way to spend an afternoon.

The fountain stood at the edge of the wood, burbling merrily up from the earth. On a pedestal next to it lay a heavy polished stone, shot through with green. Aziraphale was facing the clearing, which stretched out under a grey sky; that was where knights who were looking to start trouble usually came riding in from.

“So,” said a voice from behind him, “what happens if you pour the water over the stone?”

Aziraphale whirled around, hand on his sword.

Bugger it all. He’d been a fool to forget that there was nothing _usual_ about Crowley.

Crowley, shrouded in a long cloak with a deep hood. Crowley, who looked like he knew _exactly_ what the fountain did and _exactly_ how many problems that would cause for Aziraphale.

“Don’t you dare.”

“What?” Crowley’s voice was artificially light. “Nothing wrong with a little thunderstorm, is there?”

Aziraphale pursed his lips. “It’s not as though we need the rain.” He’d aimed for ‘elegantly disdainful’ but had instead come closer to ‘peevish’.

“I dunno,” said Crowley, passing a hand through the water. “What’s the point of keeping the stone right next to the fountain if it causes so much trouble?”

“Always with you and the questions.”

Crowley looked up sharply. “Yes, angel. Always with me and my questions.” Everything about his expression said _I’m not sorry, and I’m not likely to stop._

Aziraphale sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I don’t know, alright? I don’t know why they don’t just move the bloody thing. Probably because if it didn’t cause trouble there’d be nothing to fight over, and that would be one less quest for the knights to pursue.”

“And here I thought you’d be inspiring them toward peace and harmony.” The mockery was subtle but undeniably there.

“It all got a bit…much. I needed a break, Yvain had just won his wife back and didn’t want to spend every second making sure no one wrecked his castle by using the fountain to cause a tempest, I offered to help out. It is technically an act of charity and therefore within my remit.”

For a brief second, Aziraphale thought he saw the ghost of a smile at the corner of Crowley’s mouth. Then he blinked, and Crowley’s mouth was in the same tight line as before.

He’d probably imagined it. Best not stare at Crowley’s mouth too much, in any case.

Apparently Crowley had nothing else to say. After a few silent minutes, Aziraphale rolled his eyes heavenward. “If you came here to cause trouble, you might as well go about trying to cause it.”

“So you can stop me?”

“So we can stop glaring at each other across this blasted fountain. But also, yes, that. I am an angel, you are a demon, and such is the struggle between good and evil.”

Crowley snorted. “Keep saying that, angel. Maybe one day you’ll believe it.”

“I _do_ believe it,” Aziraphale said, accomplishing the rare feat of being simultaneously contrary and conformist.

“Suppose that’s why you stayed away so long,” Crowley grumbled.

Why _he’d_ stayed away so long? “I beg your pardon?”

“Five hundred years on a tiny island—assuming you actually made your way out here when you said you would—and I never see you, not once?” Crowley’s gaze flickered away from Aziraphale’s face. “I know when I’m not wanted.”

“Not want—Crowley! I told you to find me!”

“Well, you’re a dashed hard angel to find!”

“So you assumed I was hiding?”

The expression on Crowley’s face implied that given Aziraphale’s past behavior, this was not an unreasonable assumption.

“You never turned up!” Aziraphale continued. “I thought you were the one avoiding me!”

Crowley blinked once, twice.

“You mean to tell me,” he said, “that we’ve been running around the same drizzly spit of land for _five centuries_ , with no intentional avoidance or ill will?”

“Presumably having a ludicrous series of near-misses,” replied Aziraphale.

“Well,” Crowley muttered, “fuck me gently with a broadsword.”

There was a distant rumble of thunder, followed by the soft and much closer sound of rain on leaves.

“Listen,” said Aziraphale. “There’s no point standing about in the rain. I’m staying up at the manor, ah, the lord and lady owe me a favor. They won’t mind another guest.” He almost added, _You know you hate getting wet_ , but managed to stop himself just in time.

“Alright then,” Crowley said with a shrug. “Nice fire and a bit of ale never hurt anyone.”

Aziraphale knew this was patently untrue, but did not comment.

As they walked together into the wood, Crowley asked, “Is the rain going to make the storm worse, falling on the stone like that?”

“I think it’s only water from the fountain that makes the stone cause tempests.”

“How does that make any sense?”

“My dear, we’re walking through a wood that moves around the map whenever it feels like it. Nothing in these parts makes anything remotely close to sense.”

A young woman was waiting in the yard of the castle, a hood pulled over her head to keep the rain off.

“Well met, Sir Aziraphale,” she called. “Have you brought us a troublemaker?”

 _You have no idea_. “On the contrary, Lunette, Crowley is an old…acquaintance. I was hoping to beg a bit of hospitality on his behalf.”

“No need to beg, sir, not when it’s you. Let’s get you both in front of a fire.”

Lunette led them to a room in the guest apartments, next door to the bedchamber Aziraphale had been given, in which no sleeping had actually occurred. It was a well-appointed room, the flagstones covered with fragrant rushes to cut the smell, the walls hung with tapestries to cut the chill, and a fire roaring in the corner, with chairs and a table set before it.

Lunette took their cloaks and hung them near the fire. “Shall I bring in ale, sir?”

“If you please,” said Aziraphale.

As soon as Lunette was out the door, Crowley waved a hand and miracled them both dry.

“Really, Crowley, you could have waited until she’d left for good. Now she’ll come back and wonder.”

“Humans don’t notice half the things you worry they do,” Crowley said, draping himself across a chair.

“Lunette does,” insisted Aziraphale. “One of the cleverest humans I’ve ever met. Got Sir Yvain out of a number of scrapes, narrowly escaped being burned for witchcraft, that sort of thing.”

“A great knight of Arthur’s Round Table can’t get himself out of his own scrapes?”  
“I believe he was out of his mind for at least part of it.”

“Really?”

“Lost his love through his own fault, went stark mad.” Madness, love—much the same thing, according to plenty of people. Including, possibly, Aziraphale. He hadn’t quite decided yet. “Lunette helped him put it all back together.”

“I see.”

“There was also a lion involved.”

Crowley sat up and was clearly about to say something along the lines of _Say more right now,_ but was thwarted by the entrance of Lunette with a gratifyingly large vessel of ale and two goblets. She arranged everything on the table before giving Crowley an appraising once-over.

“Your clothes have dried awfully fast,” she said.

“Never you mind,” said Crowley, staring straight back at her.

There was no way she didn’t notice his eyes, yet she seemed completely unfazed. “Will there be anything else?”

“That will be all,” said Aziraphale. “Thank you, Lunette.”

She smirked and glided out of the room, shutting the door behind her.

Crowley poured up the ale and took a long swig from one goblet as he held the other out to Aziraphale, who took it and sank into the other chair. They both sat in silence, staring into the fire as they drank.

“How d’you think it happened?” Crowley finally asked. “Five hundred years?”

“I don’t know. Chance?”

“I couldn’t even feel you.”

“Yes, well, I thought we didn’t…open up…without discussing it first.”

“We might need to revise that policy.”

“And risk someone noticing?”

“Angel.” Crowley turned his head to look Aziraphale in the eyes. For a brief moment, Aziraphale’s entire mind was consumed by a thought that sounded something like _His beautiful neck_. “It’s been how many thousand years?”

It wasn’t hard to see where this was headed. “Nearly five thousand.”

“And has either of us been hauled before the bosses yet?”

“Not _yet_.”

“Because _no one’s noticed_.”

“Because we haven’t given them anything to notice!”

Crowley sighed. “I think if they’d been watching us, they’d’ve noticed an angel glowing in a random room in Rome, don’t you? Or is that something that happens often?”

“It does not,” said Aziraphale, slightly over-pronouncing the consonants.

“I’d been wondering, you know. If I might…get to see that again.”

Aziraphale blinked.

“We don’t have to,” Crowley continued, “but it has been five hundred years.”

“You didn’t find it…” _Overwhelming? Embarrassing? Impossibly clingy?_ “Unsettling?”

“Demon,” Crowley reminded him. “Takes quite a lot to unsettle me.”

He suspected Crowley was lying, but there was a time and a place for such accusations. “What about,” he began, his voice suddenly hoarse. He cleared his throat and tried again. “What about, ah, the whole…” He gestured vaguely between their heads.

“The mental link?”

“That.”

Crowley rubbed the back of his fingers across his mouth, thinking. It made Aziraphale feel inexplicably hungry. “If we can’t keep it closed, we can just…acknowledge…that we don’t have full control over what we think when we…”  
“Yes.”

“It’s like—the humans go a bit mad with lust, like you said.” That was not at all what he’d meant, and Crowley knew it. “It would stand to reason our minds might be the same way.”

“Indeed.”

“So. We just. Have the thoughts we have and we don’t have to discuss it after.”

“Right. Very good.”

“In that case.” Crowley pushed himself out of his chair, waving a hand toward the door.

“Locked?”

“And soundproofed,” Crowley added. Aziraphale raised an eyebrow. “I would hate for you to feel inhibited.”

He snatched at Crowley’s hands. “Come here.”

And then Crowley was in his lap, Crowley’s lips were on his own, Crowley’s mind was open to him, and it felt right, it felt so right, and Aziraphale was getting very good at pushing aside how _too_ right it felt.

_missed this_ he thought

_you’ve no idea_

Despite the half-millennium they’d spent apart, this felt absurdly leisurely. Perhaps time moved differently in Brocéliande, on top of everything else. It wouldn’t be the weirdest thing about the place.

Crowley wound his fingers through Aziraphale’s hair and pulled him even closer, sighing into his open mouth. Aziraphale dug his fingers into Crowley’s hips and sucked Crowley’s lower lip between his teeth. The noise Crowley made felt heaven-sent.

And then he pulled away. Aziraphale made a noise of protest and tried to follow, but Crowley put a hand on his chest and pressed him back against the chair. “I’ve been thinking,” he said. “What if it didn’t have to be like this? Not _this_ this,” he amended, gesturing between them, “I mean the every one-to-five-hundred years, the miscommunications.”

Aziraphale’s brow furrowed. “How do you mean?”

“Well.” Crowley stroked his fingers down the sides of Aziraphale’s neck. Aziraphale wished he’d put his mouth there. “What are we doing here in Britain?”

“I don’t know. Following orders?”

“Exactly. I’m supposed to be fomenting rebellion; you’re nominally supporting a unified system of government.”

“Nominally!”

“Support is as support does, angel, and right now you’re snogging a demon.” Crowley leaned in for another slow kiss.

“Fine, you’ve made your point,” said Aziraphale, several minutes later. “We’re on opposite sides.”

“We’re _canceling each other out_. There’s no net gain in either direction.”

“So?”

Crowley raised an eyebrow, and Aziraphale heard his thoughts loud and clear.

“No! Absolutely not!” He put his hands against Crowley’s chest. “Off. Now.”

Crowley obliged, folding his arms and leaning against the wall next to the fireplace. “I fail to see your problem—”

“How _dare_ you suggest such a thing?”

“It’s what we’re functionally already doing! Just a little arrangement to formalize things—”

“A _little arrangement_. Is that what you told Eve, Crowley? _Come now, just a little bite_?”

“I gave her a _choice_ —”

“You _tempted_ her, and now you’re trying to—oh God.” He scrubbed his hands over his face. “Now you’re tempting me, that’s what all this—” He waved a hand between them, and looked up sharply when Crowley’s hand closed around his wrist.

“Don’t you dare,” hissed Crowley. “Don’t you _dare_ suggest—I’m offering _you_ a choice, _angel_ , and if you don’t want to take my offer, don’t, but don’t you _blame—_ ”

“We can’t just stop _working_ , Crowley, if you thought they haven’t noticed now, they _will_ —”

“I’m not suggesting we disappear off the map! I’m saying we work together to maintain—what is it—homeostasis!”

“Have they discovered that yet?”

“Seven circles of Hell, you’re infuriating. Balance, then. Equilibrium. Compare schedules, get to see each other more often. I do a little of your work, you do a little of mine—”

“You? Doing _miracles_?”

“I already do them!”

“ _Demonic_ miracles!”

“You didn’t complain when I used one earlier so you could shriek as loud as you liked!”

They were properly yelling, now, both breathing hard. It should have been distressing, Aziraphale thought, and it was, a bit, but it was also…invigorating. It had been quite a while since he’d gotten so many feelings out at once.  
“Why am I not surprised?” Crowley muttered.

“Beg pardon?” asked Aziraphale, in a tone that did not suggest he was particularly interested in Crowley’s pardon.

“You spend so much time hiding from your own mind that picking a fight becomes a strange sort of turn-on. Your thoughts are very loud, angel. And before you tell me to go to hell, I’ll remind you that I’ve already been there and back.”

Aziraphale gave him a glare that typically made humans run very far, very fast. “Fuck off and get over here.”

And he pulled Crowley back to him.

Nothing leisurely about this; this was hard and fast and angry, this was teeth used for more than a quick nip.

“You can’t say I tempted you to this one, angel,” said Crowley, voice ragged, as Aziraphale attacked his belt and began to strip off his tunic. “You’re the one who started it.”

“Not complaining, are you?” Aziraphale muttered, reaching for the ties of Crowley’s trousers.

“Not in the—slightest,” replied Crowley, voice hitching as Aziraphale pressed a hand against his cock. “But you’re a fool if you think your clothes aren’t coming off too.”

They were back in the chair, Crowley kneeling over Aziraphale, biting at his mouth, at his neck, at his shoulder. Aziraphale had one hand wrapped around Crowley’s cock, stroking; his other hand was clawed into the skin of Crowley’s back, nails digging in so hard there was no way he wouldn’t leave marks.

_why is this so good_

_couldn’t tell you angel don’t you dare stop_

_wouldn’t dream yes do that again_

_fuck_

There was perverse pleasure in it, the scrape of Crowley’s teeth, the knowledge that they were doing something they absolutely shouldn’t be doing, the power that came with holding Crowley right at the edge of orgasm. Aziraphale knew he should have felt worse about it, but—

_not hurting anyone are we_

“Not in a way we don’t like,” said Crowley, detaching his mouth from Aziraphale’s ear, “based on the noise you just made. Although—Hell—if you don’t let me come soon—”

“Touch me,” said Aziraphale, pressing increasingly frantic kisses against Crowley’s mouth.

_we’ll go together_

Crowley slid his hand down Aziraphale’s cock.

Neither of them lasted long, after that.

Crowley miracled away the mess almost immediately. Aziraphale thought he might climb off and find his clothes, but it seemed Crowley retained certain snake-like habits, even in human form, and Aziraphale was pleasantly surprised when Crowley tucked his head against Aziraphale’s shoulder and stayed curled against his chest.

He rubbed a hand absentmindedly over Crowley’s back, feeling where the scratches he’d left were already becoming warm and raised.

“I can miracle these away,” he whispered. “I didn’t realize I’d been quite so…”

“Wild?”

“Inconsiderate.”

“Hardly. Would’ve said something if I hadn’t liked it. Leave ‘em, they’ll fade on their own. Besides,” he said, pulling back just enough to inspect Aziraphale’s neck, “looks like I gave as good as I got.”

Aziraphale felt a blush creep over his face. “Crowley?”

“Mm?”

“Let me think about it. About what you said.”

“What, right before you tried to maul me?”

“I thought you said—”

“Teasing, angel.” Crowley’s voice was light as he levered himself off Aziraphale’s lap and began setting his trousers to rights. “One good orgasm and you reconsider?”

“Not because of the—stop trying to shock me.”

Crowley rolled his eyes as he pulled his tunic over his head. “Stop pretending to be shocked.”

Aziraphale sighed. Apparently things weren’t about to get any easier. “How about this. Give me a century.”

“A _century_?”

“A hundred years to think everything through, to weigh all considerations properly. In a century and a day, I’ll give you my answer.”

“And how will we be sure there’s no repeat of the past five hundred years?” Crowley handed Aziraphale his own tunic. He stood to put it on.

“I’ll—open the mind link. You should be able to find me from that. Or, make sure you’re asleep around that time and I’ll come find you. I’d swear to it formally, but I think that would end up in a filing cabinet Upstairs somewhere.”

Crowley reached for the goblets, still minding their own business on the table. “There’s a bit of ale left. Drink and call it sworn?”

Aziraphale accepted the cup. “So be it.”

They drank the goblets dry.

Crowley retrieved his cloak from the fireplace and swung it around his shoulders. “A century and a day, then.”

“Indeed.” Aziraphale turned his empty goblet in his hands, already feeling the absence of Crowley’s thoughts mingling with his own. “And…” He felt like he should offer some sort of benediction, but wasn’t sure it would be welcome. “Be safe.”

“You know me, angel,” said Crowley. “Soul of discretion.”

Crowley left the castle, unnoticed by a single mortal soul as he went. Half an hour later, Aziraphale was in the Great Hall, explaining to his hosts that his time in Brocéliande had come to an end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks, as ever, to themoonmothwrites for being an excellent beta!
> 
> Setting a chapter in Arthurian Britain made me want to scream because NONE OF THE TIMELINES MAKES SENSE so idk, I do what I want, also please go read Yvain: the Knight of the Lion or listen to the Myths and Legends podcast episodes on it because that story is BONKERS and also one of my favorite Arthurian tales.

**Author's Note:**

> Come talk to me in the comments, and find me on tumblr at [je-suis-em-jee](https://je-suis-em-jee.tumblr.com/). Thank you for reading!


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